Finnish artist ANNA KLAUS studied painting under different teachers all trough the 1970’s. She has been drawing and painting semi-professionally since the mid-80’s.
As a fetish artist ANNA KLAUS’ works have appeared in many central European magazines since 1993. In 1995 the Dutch company SublieM published two of ANNA’s paintings as postcards.
ANNA KLAUS’ first fetish art solo exhibition was held at the Europerve gala (organized by Demask) in Amsterdam in 1998. Anna’s international breakthrough came in 1999 at the first international fetish art fair, ArtBizarre 99 (organized by Marquis) in Cologne/Köln. With 50 exhibited paintings the Kinky Copenhagen event (organized by Bite The Apple / Manifest) in 2003 was so far the largest showing of ANNA KLAUS’ artwork. From this exhibition some works were acquired by the Copenhagen Museum Erotica.
In 2004 visitors of the all-European netsite dom-unique.com voted ANNA KLAUS fetish painter of the year. In 2005 ANNA KLAUS exhibited at the Fetish Evolution Expo in Ratingen, Germany. At all of the fetish exhibitions mentioned above, ANNA KLAUS exhibited under the name Anna Kuritus. From the beginning of 2017 she changed her name to ANNA KLAUS.
In 2023 ANNA KLAUS held a 30-year retrospective exhibition as a fetish painter at Galleria A2 in Helsinki. For this retrospective, PhD Juha-Heikki Tihinen wrote the following assessment:
“Finnish artist Anna Klaus has been painting fetish-themed works since the 1990s, and her oeuvre spans three decades and includes a wide range of variations on the theme. She has worked with fetish costumes and products as well as her own versions of art history, painting both groups and individual portraits. Until 2017, Klaus painted under the pseudonym Anna Kuritus. The artist’s imagery opens up a view into the world of fetishes and its practices, but also serves as an excellent example of the possibilities of erotic art to embody the multiplicity of desires and identities.
Latex and rubber are recurrent materials in Klaus’s paintings. Both are carefully treated for their gloss and opacity and are depicted as sensual and erotically charged substances that fascinate and excite. Rubber and latex are the wearer’s uniform, but also another skin. A similar treatment is given to sexual acts, which the artist depicts in a way that makes the viewer perceive the broad spectrum of SM and its fascination. It is a question of roles and their playfulness, the sexualisation of the whole body and the imagination. Klaus describes her themes with warmth and passion, and sometimes with a touch of mischief. It is a fantasy, even if it is real and meaningful.
Klaus’s art world is like a kaleidoscope of desires, where different fetishes and interests take their place. Her art is both participatory and inclusive, as the viewer not only explores the world of fetishes, but can also identify their own interests. Klaus’s work includes paintings that comment on art history, in which the artist has realised her own version in a way that makes us see the art historical role model with new eyes. Hugo Simberg’s Halla has become, in Klaus’s treatment, a treatise on bondage and the pleasure that comes with it. Anna Klaus’s version is a tribute to the work of her historical colleague, but it also makes us wonder how to react to the fetishist version of Halla and how to deal with overt sexuality in art in general. Like Tom of Finland, Klaus creates her own imaginative and sexual utopia in which everyone can reflect on the nature of their own interests and their relationship to sexuality.
Anna Klaus was first exhibited abroad in 1995. Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and acquired by the Museum Erotica (Copenhagen) and numerous private collections in Europe and the United States. The exhibition at Gallery A2 is a retrospective of Klaus’s art from the 1990s to the present day.”
Juha-Heikki Tihinen, PhD